18 Years of Brain Mush

CamWorld Daily

9:30 AM: CNN.com: …

9:50 AM: I was supposed to be in Manhattan this morning for a doctor’s appointment at 9:30 AM, but skipped it. I have no answer to why I skipped it (a feeling?). I’ve never been so glad I listened to my intuition.

10:00 AM: The terrorist events in Manhattan and D.C. today are truly horrific. Our country will never be the same again.

10:20 AM: There are no numbers yet, but I’m guessing thousands of people died in these attacks. All air traffic in the U.S. has been halted. Most of lower Manhattan is being evacuated. What our President does in response to these attacks will be a test of his administration. Expect retaliation. Expect war.

10:50 AM: Most of the cell phone networks in NYC are overloaded, and it’s near impossible to get a connection. Manhattan is truly an island of isolation today. Manhattan is paralyzed.

11:20 AM: There is soot falling out of the sky outside my apartment in Brooklyn. Surreal.

12:03 PM:Damien and I just got back from the grocery store. People seem pretty calm, but horribly shocked. The stores are packed and the supply of bottled water is gone.

12:22 PM: Outside the hospital down the street from my apartment there is a guy holding up a sign saying “We need blood.”

12:27 PM: The news channels are showing Palestinians cheering and chanting in the streets. Disgusting. The people responsible for today’s events have no idea what they are in for.

1:20 PM: I took some photos from the roof of my apartment in Brooklyn. Not very good shots, but here they are.

2:10 PM: I just heard that the commercial plane that crashed near Pittsburgh was actually shot down by Air Force jets because it wasn’t responding. The TV says that that plane was likely a hijacked jet headed for D.C. Update: The Pentagon now says this is a rumor, and not true.

2:32 PM:Yahoo Most Popular has some amazing photos of the World Trade Center burning and then collapsing.

3:37 PM: A friend from the midwest tells me that gas prices tomorrow are going up to $2.65/gallon because some of the gas refineries have closed due to terrorist threat. It’s not just NYC and D.C. that are being affected. The whole country is feeling this.

6:31 PM: Today’s events remind me of the 1998 movie The Siege, in which New York City is attacked repeatedly by terrorists. In the movie, martial law is declared and people of Arab descent are rounded up and put in concentration camps in Brooklyn. I fear that the U.S. is on the verge of declaring war and our racial biases are going to come out in full and innocent people are going to be hurt.

6:56 PM: Doc Searls has posted an email from Eric Raymond about today’s terrorist attacks and the problems of panicking politicians.

8:38 PM: Bush’s speech not only sucked, it had no substance. Note, though, that he made sure to insert the religious bent into his speech. I was not impressed. The American people want a solid response, not a poorly-written speech from a bad public speaker. Robert Scoble has a Letter to President Bush outlining some of the things most Americans would like to see Bush talk about.

10:39 PM: CBS just reported that they caught somebody going over the George Washington Bridge with a truckload of explosives. Wow. 11:48 PM Update: This turns out to be a false report and the van had no explosives.

11:21 PM: Disgusting. Reports are coming in that gas prices have gone up to $5.00/gallon in some parts of the U.S. There is no justifiction for this. The gas companies are taking advantage of a scared people during a national tragedy. Anyone trying to profit off this time of confusion and fear should be punished. It’s simply wrong. Perhaps we need the Bush administration to mandate a nationwide gas price freeze, dropping the prices to a pre-tragedy level, and only giving price control back to the gas companies after this is all over. Given the influence the natural energy companies have on the Bush administration, this is pretty unlikely. Perhaps instead of Bush spouting some religious spiel like he did in tonight’s speech, he can step up to the plate and act like a real President and stop unscrupulous people and companies from taking advantage of the American people.

11:34 PM: Lots of the niche cable TV channels are offline today, all with screens saying they’re off the air due to today’s tragedy. Channels like: Home & Garden Television, Do-It-Yourself Channel, and The Food Network. I wonder if all these channels are taped or broadcast out of New York, and if so, were their offices affected?